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About This Role
Innodata (Nasdaq: INOD) is a global data engineering company. We believe that data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are inextricably linked. Our mission is to enable the responsible advancement of artificial intelligence by providing the data, evaluation frameworks, and human expertise required to build AI systems that can be trusted at scale. We provide a range of transferable solutions, platforms, and services for Generative AI / AI builders and adopters. In every relationship, we honor our 36\+ year legacy delivering the highest quality data and outstanding outcomes for our customers.
About the Program:
Innodata's Federal Practice builds the trusted data layer for critical infrastructure Trust \& Safety work. Partnering with a leading systems integrator, we're delivering a modern, governed data services platform in a secure federal (IL4\) environment. Over an intensive 20\-week phase, you'll help stand up a data services storefront, a DataCard governance framework, synthetic data integration, and Databricks write\-back capabilities.
About the Role:
As the AI Solutions Engineer, you'll bring the platform's AI capabilities to life. You'll integrate synthetic data generation into the pipeline, stand up and tune the annotation toolchain, and orchestrate reproducible ML workflows that the rest of the team can build on. You'll partner with the Solution Architect and Data/Annotation Engineer to turn raw corpora into high\-quality, model\-ready data. This role suits an engineer who's fluent across modern AI tooling and enjoys making sophisticated ML infrastructure actually work in production.
Key Responsibilities:
- Configure and validate native AI\-assistive features across bundled platform components (Dataset Explorer, DataCard Service, Annotation Platform)
- Integrate and tune SAM 2 for full\-motion video annotation: object tracking, segmentation calibration, confidence threshold configuration
- Implement Frontier model API integration for synthetic data fidelity validation: prompt engineering, response validation, quality scoring
- Configure AI\-assisted annotation features: confidence scoring, auto\-escalation triggers, model\-assisted label suggestion
- Implement ICAM / OIDC authentication integration with AFS identity framework
- Configure data\-layer DLP policies above the AFS\-managed DLP infrastructure substrate
- Configure NiFi FMV codec validation layer (H.264, H.265, MPEG\-4\) above AFS\-managed substrate
- Validate AI feature integration end\-to\-end across storefront, annotation platform, and DataCard write\-back during Phase C
Must\-Have Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related field required; Master's degree preferred. Equivalent experience may substitute for degree on a 2\-for\-1 basis.
- 6\+ years total professional experience, 4\+ years hands\-on AI/ML engineering
- SAM 2 or equivalent foundation model integration for computer vision or video annotation
- Frontier model API integration (OpenAI, Anthropic, or equivalent): async job management, quality validation pipelines
- Python — strong, production\-grade; comfortable with ML tooling and data pipeline development
- Experience configuring AI\-assistive features in annotation platforms or ML data tooling
- Active Secret clearance with TS/SCI eligibility
Nice\-to\-Have Qualifications:
- CVAT annotation platform — AI feature configuration and operation
- DoD or IC data program experience: CUI, distribution statements, federal data governance
- Evaluation design for AI/ML training data: IAA methodology, drift detection, model performance measurement
- Video understanding or FMV annotation experience
- DataCard or ML data provenance framework familiarity
*The expected hourly salary range for this position is $75 to $80 p/hour, based on experience, skills, and qualifications.*
Note to Candidates:
*This role does not own infrastructure deployment. The AI Solutions Engineer operates at the AI/ML configuration and integration layer above the infrastructure. Ideal candidate is equally comfortable writing Python integration code and reasoning about model quality — and understands that in a federal data environment, every AI decision needs an audit trail.*
*Please be aware of recruitment scams involving individuals or organizations falsely claiming to represent employers. Innodata will never ask for payment, banking details, or sensitive personal information during the application process. To learn more on how to recognize job scams, please visit the Federal Trade Commission's guide at* https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job\-scams.
*If you believe you've been targeted by a recruitment scam, please report it to Innodata at* [email protected] *and consider reporting it to the FTC at* ReportFraud.ftc.gov*.*
Salary Context
This $156K-$166K range is below the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $180K across 1841 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 3,708 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At Innodata, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $218,750 based on 3,817 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $200,000. This role's midpoint ($161K) sits 26% below the category median. Disclosed range: $156K to $166K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($300,000) and Research Engineer ($280,000). By seniority level: Entry: $120,000; Mid: $200,000; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,150; VP: $250,000.
Innodata AI Hiring
Innodata has 3 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer, Data Scientist. Positions span Tysons Corner, VA, US, Ridgefield Park, NJ, US. Compensation range: $166K - $175K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 14% (508 positions) offer remote work, while 3,180 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,045 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (810 roles, $277,088 median); Los Angeles (397 roles, $215,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 3,708 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 102 entry-level, 1,705 mid-level, 1,469 senior, and 432 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 14% of the market (508 positions). The remaining 3,180 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $217,500. Top-quartile compensation starts at $272,100. The 90th percentile reaches $325,000. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($300,000 median, 21 roles); Research Engineer ($280,000 median, 147 roles); AI Architect ($254,798 median, 67 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 3,708 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (2,605), Data Scientist (310), AI Software Engineer (259). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (102) are outnumbered by mid-level (1,705) and senior (1,469) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 432 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 14% of all AI roles (508 positions), with 3,180 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $217,500. Top-quartile roles start at $272,100, and the 90th percentile reaches $325,000. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $300,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,890 postings), Aws (1,103 postings), Azure (877 postings), Rag (855 postings), Gcp (631 postings), Prompt Engineering (560 postings), Pytorch (545 postings), Claude (498 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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